Free Republic

Air Force Lieutenant General Henry 'Trey" Obering, Missile Defense Agency (MDA) director, announced the successful completion today of a multiple simultaneous engagement involving two ballistic missile targets. This was MDA's latest "hit to kill" intercept flight test conducted jointly with the U.S. Navy off the coast of Kauai, Hawaii. For the first time, the operationally realistic test involved two unitary "non-separating" targets, meaning that the target's warheads did not separate from their booster rockets. This was the 32nd and 33rd successful "hit-to-kill" intercepts since 2001. Designated as Flight Test Standard Missile-13 (FTM-13), it marked the tenth and eleventh successful intercepts,...

Senior Bush administration officials said publicly for the first time yesterday that the United States is set to shoot down any North Korean missile launch that threatens the United States. National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley, briefing reporters during President Bush's brief visit here, said the United States has a missile defense system with "limited operational capability" that could be used to try to shoot down an incoming North Korean missile, but he added that U.S. officials were vigorously pursuing a diplomatic push to head off a test launch by Pyongyang. "The purpose, of course, of that missile defense system...

WASHINGTON, June 23, 2006 – The Missile Defense Agency and the Navy conducted a successful "hit to kill" missile defense test yesterday off the island of Kauai, Hawaii. The test involved the launch of a Standard Missile 3 from the Aegis-class cruiser USS Shiloh to hit a "separating" target, meaning that the target warhead separated from its booster rocket, officials said. "Hit to kill" technology uses direct collision of the interceptor missile with the target, destroying the target using only kinetic energy from the force of the collision. It was the seventh successful intercept test involving the sea-based component of...